November 2nd, 2020
“It must be hard to be a
Seahawks player and not like the taste of champaign right? The 2020 World Series winners will have their parade later today, starting around 10 a.m., through the streets of
Denver. The first real true powerhouse of New MLB, the
Seahawks reached have made the playoffs every year since 2007 and won six Trophies in this stretch, their last in 2016. They… static… click…”
Hard to believe it has been twenty years...
I was a 14 year old kid trying to learn how to play ball back then, something that turned out to be a lost cause. As a kid, I lost my heart to the
Vancouver Canadians, my favorites in Canadian Baseball Association even before NMLB came along, but, together with my non existent skills as a player, my love for baseball had faded, and I only lifted a single beer when they finally won it all in 2014.
67-95… coming off a 100 loss season in 2019… embarrassing.
2014… the year when one of the greatest players of all time retired.
Jose Casares, the “Pelo Buche”. A 5x MvP, 8 Silver Slugger, 13x All-Star and 1x Gold Glover. Still the league leader in career doubles and career WAR as well as runs scored. The first and so far only inductee in the league’s Wall of Legends. What a guy…
But I digress. After my failed attempt to become a ballplayer, I buried myself into my second love, and that was mathematics. A master’s degree in Maths and some hard work landed me a good job as senior analyst with a huge Canadian company in the financial industry. Good money, good colleagues, loads of future opportunities including the chance to take part in AI development.
And what do I do? Right, I spend my free on my home PC, calculating AI models about NMLB, writing blog posts about talent scouting via AI and sabermetrics, and evaluating draft picks using AI models and every stat available. And writing blogposts on how GM’s should do their work.
And where did that land me? Well…
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Expos fire GM McMahan
stadiumreport.bbn October 28th, 2020
Stadiumreport.com's reporter Hannah Cats in
Montreal was surprised today when she found a very irritated Bobby McMahan leaving Olympic Stadium carrying a box. Apparently the GM had just found out his services were no longer needed.
While not stopping to make a statement, McMahan apparently kept muttering something about being the first to escape a sinking ship. A veteran GM, Bobby McMahan was the one that build up the
Oakland Oaks in 2000 to be fit for NMLB and shaped the team so that they could reach the playoffs in 2002 and all of that as one of the youngest GM’s in baseball. He let his contract expire in 2004 and walked away from baseball to pursue other things, but returned to baseball in 2015.
Taking over
Montreal in 2015, he made some crucial moves to win the 2015 World Series, but most fans more or less now identify him with the slow decline from World Series winners to a hopeless 107 loss team. Yet, his reputation in the league is still excellent, and this may just be a case of “what have you done for me lately?”